The Russian election hacking controversy came to Madison, Georgia one Friday afternoon in July.

Scrolling through the news feed in her small real estate office inside a narrow red-brick house on Main Street, Jeanne Dufort's interest was piqued by a federal indictment against Russian hackers who had targeted election websites in Georgia amid a plan to interfere in the 2016 election.

So she quickly got in touch with Dutton Morehouse, the head of the county Democrats, and they decided to demand what to them seemed the only responsible remedy to bolster what they view as Georgia's lax election security: a switch from electronic voting machines to paper ballots.

While Dufort and Morehouse were working in Madison to push the county to switch to paper ballots, election integrity advocates in the capital, Atlanta, sued to force the issue on a state-wide level.